Call Mayor Gray: you can use $140 million to restore the Housing Production Trust Fund

October 11, 2012

At the end of September, the District learned that the DC government had collected $140 million in taxes above what they had expected in Fiscal Year 2012. During the same time, the District has cut housing and other important programs to balance the budget. One of these programs is the Housing Production Trust Fund, which lost $18 million in FY12, with a small restoration of $2 million earlier in the year.

The District now has the opportunity to use some of this unexpected money to restore these programs. The Housing For All Campaign and the Fair Budget Coalition encourage Mayor Gray to invest in programs that have suffered from serious cuts in the last two years: the Housing Production Trust Fund, Homeless Services, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

“The budget surplus is a chance for the District to restore important programs that our communities need. Please use some of the 140 million dollar surplus to invest in basic human needs and affordable housing:

fully fund TANF and Homeless Services and

restore $16 million to the Housing Production Trust Fund“

Thank you for taking action today!

Recent cuts have hurt the Housing Production Trust Fund

In recent years, the Housing Production Trust Fund has been severely weakened. During the recession in the late 2000’s, property sales fell drastically. As a result, much less money was collected by Deed Recordation and Transfer taxes, and funding for the Trust Fund fell to very low levels. When the real estate market did begin to pick up in recent years, the Trust Fund received a major $18 million cut in the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, bringing the amount of funding available for new production and preservation efforts down to only $13 million (see chart below). The $18 million transfer to the DC Housing Authority (DCHA) was used to pay for the ongoing cost of the Local Rent Supplement Program, a program that had been previously funded from the general fund. This trend continued in FY13, where the amount transferred to DCHA increased to $20 million.

For FY 2013, the Council pledged proceeds from the sale of city owned property to restore most of this cut, and the Mayor and Council also pledged future revenue increases to restore funding, however, these promised actions have yet to occur. Even if funding is restored for FY 2013, the $20 million cut could continue in FY 2014 and beyond as shown in the chart below unless permanent restoration is made in the District’s budget.

* $2 million of the $18 million cut in FY 2012 has now been restored in the FY12 Supplemental Budget. Ongoing DHCD Admin costs are estimated based on the FY 2013 budget.

Housing for All Blog is a project of the Housing For All Campaign. We believe all District residents deserve decent, quality housing at a price they can afford, and call on District officials to create a full Continuum of Housing that will meet that need.